Why Additive Manufacturing?

Additive Manufacturing can accelerate and amplify R&D efforts

We want to work with ambitious manufacturing businesses to help you determine whether, and how, you can capitalise on the opportunity to use additive manufacturing as part of your development strategy.

Additive manufacturing uses 3D printing technology to create parts and assemblies without tooling. As part of a research and development programme, it can reduce design risk, provide efficiencies for the manufacturing process and can be used for low-production part runs

Shorten R&D timelines
Adapting designs quickly, making changes on the fly and speeding time to market are key ways 3D printing and additive manufacturing are making R&D efforts more efficient. Even some of our Olympians used the technology on their journey to win medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Complexity advances innovation
Low-volume, highly specialized, complex products and cyclical, iterative processes can be supported by 3D printing. Use complex shapes and structures to create new functions and aesthetics and to deliver better outcomes for your customers.

Eliminate design for manufacturability limitations
Explore more options, more cost-effectively. Design several parts as one and cut out assembly steps or split a product into components. You can combine production-quality materials and expansive rapid prototyping methods to create final-use products with far fewer design restrictions.

Modern industrial 3-D printing is challenging what’s achievable. R&D teams, working closely with their additive manufacturing service providers, can embrace new materials and technologies to imagine and develop fresh designs never before possible.

Is additive manufacturing right for you?

Here are some things to think about:

Complexity – additive manufacturing is often ideal for geometrically complex parts; simple shapes may be best manufactured another way.

Size – additive manufacturing is designed for small to medium-sized parts; large parts are often best produced another way.

Scale – additive manufacturing works best for a relatively small number of parts; a large number of identical parts may be best made another way.